


Like a Switch

by RiaTheDreamer



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: A lot of comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Let Grif talk about Huggins damnit, M/M, post s17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-30 15:29:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20099467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiaTheDreamer/pseuds/RiaTheDreamer
Summary: In which Grif is allowed to mourn a friendship that never existed.





	Like a Switch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AmateurScribes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmateurScribes/gifts).

Grif and Simmons share a room together. There’s nothing new about that. Every night, Simmons will remind him that a proper night's sleep requires eight hours of rest, and Grif will argue that they could just sleep late, and Simmons will say that he wants to be up at 7am, and Grif will asks why because they’ve retired, and Simmons will retort that some habits are hard to break.

They’ve tried it before, of course, on Iris, but no one really talks about Iris any longer. At least, not if Grif is present.

It’s a routine they have to settle back into.

But schedules can be hard to follow after travelling through time.

It’s around midnight when they finally collapse in bed, tilting against each other before the fall. Grif stays down, oblivious to the civies he’s still wearing. Simmons, however, has a long-lived distaste for wrinkled clothing, and so he stands up to neatly fold his shirt and pants in a manner that would make his mother proud.

“Goodnight, Grif,” he says and turns off the light.

He doesn’t receive a reply because the other man already has his face pressed against the pillow. The low snoring is a comfort more than an annoyance, and Simmons settles down next to him.

He doesn’t fall asleep, however.

Along with the warmth of Grif’s body creep the worried thoughts that he cannot avoid. What if time unravels again, the fabric stretched too thin? What if an army invaded tomorrow and they’ll miss it because they slept in? What if he’d forgotten to lock the door and a robber could sneak in and steal their comics collection (with an estimated worth of 30 dollars, and yet some people refused to acknowledge it as a valuable)? Or what if Donut snuck in and took pictures of them while they had unconsciously snuggled?

With a soft sigh, he slips out of bed (Grif’s hand had already traveled to rest upon his stomach) and walks towards the door. He does manage to stop himself from cursing when his foot gets stuck in one of Grif’s boxers that had been discarded on the floor. However, he does not stop himself from tripping and falling against the wall.

A _click _echoes through the room when he makes contact with the light switch. He slams a fist against it a second later, hoping to turn off the light before Grif has awakened by the first change.

He’s too late.

Simmons knows this because his cyborg eye has night vision. This is handy for several reasons, and no one can tell how he looks like an idiot with one eye squeezed shut when they are stumbling around in the darkness themselves.

Right now, it grants him the ability to see Grif’s shocked face.

Normally, Grif has a control of his expression that’d be impressive even to a con-artist. He doesn’t talk about how he practiced it (Simmons knows, of course, but none of them wants to openly discuss their childhood), but he uses it with ease.

But in the few seconds right after he wakes up, the brain is still half-asleep, the emotions are in charge and his expressions are laid bare. Most often Simmons will see the remains of a nightmare in the mismatched eyes (he will never ask into it, however, because Grif will never talk about it), but when they sleep in late, he will wake up and stare into Grif’s face that looks blissfully happy as he blinks back at him.

Right now, he stares into Grif’s eyes and sees a raw desperate hope in them.

As the light fades, so does that emotion.

Simmons isn’t sure at first, and so he turns on the light bulb again.

It illuminates Grif’s deep frown.

He turns it off and sees the confusion that Grif doesn’t manage to hide.

He turns it on and sees the dread in his face.

He turns it off and sees the _pain_.

He quickly turns it on and-

“Would you stop playing with the light?” Grif grumbles and presses a hand against his face, shielding it from the light, from Simmons.

But that’s too late.

Simmons is going to apologize, and he’s already opened his mouth for it, but instead of saying ‘sorry for waking you up’, he says, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Grif is going to say ‘no’. He knows this, and Grif knows it too, but then again, if it was set in stone, then Simmons shouldn’t have asked.

Grif’s expression continues to melt until Simmons is half-way terrified, and with a deep sight, Grif says, “Am I friends with Huggins? _Was_? Past tense? I mean, it’s not real any longer. Is it? If we fixed time and the fuck-up didn’t happen, does it still count?”

“You remember her. She remembers you. That’s pretty real. I think.”

“I thought about it. And gave myself a headache.” Grif wriggles his noise at the thought. “Fuck time travel.”

“Yeah,” Simmons says and sits down on the bed next to him. “Fuck time travel.”

Grif leans his head back, eyes drifting upwards until they reach the light bulb. “I’m not gonna see her again,” Grif says and shrugs. “So it’s not like it matters.”

“A lot of friendships matter even if they can’t see each other,” Simmons says.

“Yeah. Which ones?”

“Ask Caboose about Church,” Simmons says and he almost feels bad when he sees Grif’s shoulders fall. But he is right, and if there’s one habit Simmons can never get rid of, it’s proving that he knows things.

“Right.” Grif inhales deeply and closes his eyes to let the light rest on his face. There’s a pause before he continues, “But she’s going to be like a gazillion years old. She’ll forget me. I’ll probably gonna forget her, too. I keep thinking – you know, that’s the problem. I shouldn’t think that much. That’s _your _bad habit. And now you’ve forcefed it to me. Thanks a lot.”

Maybe, in another timeline, Simmons wouldn’t know Grif well enough to know that this is a cheap trick to change subject.

But right now, Simmons is brave enough to ask.

“What did you think about?”

“It’s just- if it didn’t happen, it isn’t real. And if it isn’t real, I shouldn’t be thinking about it. I don’t know, man. It keeps me up at night.”

“You miss her,” Simmons concludes. Something in his chest tightens, but he pushes the pain away. It’s not important when Grif’s eyes are clouded with something he can’t quite understand yet.

“She was cool,” Grif admits. “Annoying but cool. Like- I’ve grown up with a little sister, you know. She was good.”

Simmons remembers how the light had yelled at Grif, back when they were about to screw up (is ‘back’ the right word when it no longer happened?). But most importantly, he remembers how quiet Grif had been afterwards.

He remembers how Grif had been hurt, and a second later his stomach drops when he remembers how happy he’d been at seeing their friendship end. Simmons is selfish like that. He knows this himself, even if it’s Grif who claims he’s the one with the sin.

But Simmons’ jealousy is tightly connected with insecurity, and it’d hurt seeing how Grif had made a new friend (because what if that was a skill of his? What if he made more friends? Some who wouldn’t leave him behind? Some Grif would always care about?).

“I didn’t really know her,” Simmons says and leans closer to Grif so they can feel each other’s warmth.

He’s speaking the truth. Huggins was a light that was turned off before Simmons ever had a proper conversation with her, and now she’s a light far far away, like a star they can never fully reach again.

To him, she’d been the weird alien that had followed Grif around for a year and was getting dangerously close to replacing Simmons’ role.

But there’s another truth to that, and it’s the fact that she was the one staying with Grif when Simmons couldn’t.

And that, Simmons realizes, shouldn’t be tainted with jealousy. It should be gratefulness, but how can he ever express that now when she’s gone?

All that’s left is a sad Grif.

And a Simmons to look after him when Huggins can’t.

So Simmons stares at the light as he lays an arm around Grif and softly suggests, “Maybe you could tell me about her?”

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so for some reason today I was like 'i wanna write a one-shot', and I really wanted to talk about how Huggins just didn't matter in the end, and how Grif should be allowed to bring her up? And then I tried to understand the ending of s17, because if I understand this right, then s16 practically never happened by fixing the timeline, and then I just gave myself a headache, and then I cried/laughed for an hour, and then i stayed up 1am to get this done, take it or leave it.
> 
> As always; English isn't my native language so I apologize for any mistakes and you can find me as riathedreamer on tumblr and twitter


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